Storyboard: Al-Jazeera English Enters The Stream

Social media has been at the heart of popular uprisings sweeping across the Middle East, and Al-Jazeera English has been one of the best sources for hearing what’s going on. Now the Qatar-based network is bringing the social media experience inside your TV with its new show, The Stream. Scheduled to launch in May, the talk show will be like no other: no tape, no script, no satellite hookups.

“It’s about people talking to each other,” says Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, the show’s co-host. The producers will incorporate Twitter, Facebook and YouTube posts into their 30 minutes on air.

They also plan to use Skype video chat for guest interviews, as part of a bid to create a seamless presence between the web community and the daily broadcast. “I could sit here and pretend I know exactly what we’re going to do,” says Shihab-Eldin, “but the truth is I don’t, and that’s kind of the excitement.”

In this Storyboard podcast, host Adam Rogers grabs an interview with Shihab-Eldin about the show and Al-Jazeera English’s growing U.S. cred. al-Jazeera has seen a 2,500 percent increase in web traffic in recent weeks, 60 percent of which is coming from the United States.

“The democratization of the Arab world is directly related to the democratization of the media,” says Shihab-Eldin. “It’s not just about organizing protests…. There are so many different ways in which social media is used to connect people across borders, but also to connect old media with new media, to fight the battle, to fight oppression.”